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If there’s a food style that speaks to summer louder than barbecue, I can’t think of it. Okay, maybe a cold beer with a side of sunshine, but that is solstice sustenance of a different sort.

Anyway, being an amateur foodie who likes to stay alert to the trends du jour, I have noticed of late that barbecue is increasingly boffo at the buffet box office, that when it comes to being hip in the culinary world, nothing is hotter today than a rack of ribs slathered in a spicy dry rub or a pile of pulled pork topped with crunchy coleslaw stuffed into a warm bun.

Whether it’s Guy Fieri tucking into tender slabs of slow-cooked ribs on the Food Network, or a showdown at the local cookout corral — like last weekend’s Canadian Festival of Chili and BBQ competition in Langley — the lure of the smoke is pulling us in.

So, being an amateur foodie who also likes to eat, I’ve decided that there’s no better way to spend July and August this year than working my way through the best of B.C. barbecue — be it hamburgers, smokies, hotdogs, pork chops, beef steak, brisket, ribs, corn and, if need be, assorted sides.

And this is where you, dear readers, come in. I don’t want to cook any of the above, beyond what is already keeping my back deck grill a-smoke. Instead, I want you to steer me in the right dining-out direction by setting me on the mostly untrodden paths to the best BBQ pits in town, so that I can test the best and report back.

Being no BBQ trifler, I’ve already worked my way through the menu at Memphis Blues, and the food cart that is Re-Up BBQ, and over the years have enjoyed many a Korean and Chinese BBQ offering in Metro Vancouver.

But I know there are many more barbecue hot spots to be discovered, old standards or new kids on the block, little holes in the wall or mom and pop restaurants or picnic-bench seasonal pop-ups, many of which deserve to be shared with Vancouver Sun foodies.

And if I have to sacrifice my waistline in the name of great gastronomy, so be it.

Meanwhile, as you’re considering spilling the baked beans and are busy dashing off your nominations — to my email below, please — let’s ponder the history of this glorious repast.

The word barbecue is said to trace its tasty roots to barabicu, a form of cooking common in the Caribbean where simple, open-air culinary skills are culturally inherent. The style evolved over time, and all over the world, with specific regional attributes.

In European kitchens, it came to be known as barbacoa, roughly translated to sacred fire pit, and in the American south, barbecue has long been a dinner table staple, in which everything from alligator to whole hogs are grist for the grill.

Whatever barbecue’s genesis and evolution — picture a caveman grappling with a rack of sabre tooth tiger ribs over a flickering flame — it’s a word that instantly conjures the aromatic vision of cooking (mostly) meat on open fire, and one’s taste buds can’t help but tingle.

Purists, of course, hold to distinction, and will remind us that there is a difference between grilling, which is fast and furious and often done on that gleaming propane cooker from Home Depot, and barbecuing, which is all about slow, hot-smoke cooking with charcoal or hickory wood glowing in a homemade convection-style heavy-metal drum designed to tenderize and flavour in its own good time.

Barbecuing is not just about taste, either, or about temperature control, or the best cut of meat, or about using homemade sauce versus the store-bought bottled variety.

It’s also about one-upmanship, about bragging rights and producing the most tender, fall-off-the-bone rack of pork ribs or the best blue-ribbon sauce to keep things just spicy enough to stand out from the competitive crowd, whether you’re a backyard rookie or a member of the North Vancouver Bad Ass BBQ Catering and Competition team.

Barbecue sauces and rubs are an industry unto themselves, with varying degrees of smokiness, spiciness, hotness and sweetness. In the national and regional competitions that constantly crow that Texas BBQ is better than Kansas City BBQ is better than Memphis BBQ, the usually secret sauces contain everything from horseradish to mayonnaise.

Sometimes, there isn’t any sauce, or it’s served on the side. And then there are the obligatory and inventive sides, slaw being one of the many musts in the average barbecue spread.

That’s the great thing about barbecue. These days, it’s anything you want it to be, as long as it’s artfully charred, succulently moist and memorably tasty.

This entreaty, should one need an excuse to eat more BBQ, is in keeping with newspaper tradition. Thirty years ago, legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko organized Ribfest, a Windy City BBQ competition that, within a decade, was attracting 10,000 people. This year’s event, held earlier this month, featured 50,000 pounds of BBQ and 50,000 tasters.

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